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Unanswered: Tool for online viewing of DB relational model

Hello guys,

Can you please advise me what tool to use for my task?
I am working in offshore software development company (around 20 developers). We are developing online financial system working with Oracle DB. Primary development is done with Ruby/Ruby on Rails and database structure is created/updated with Ruby migrations (well, I'd say those are scripts to create/update DB structure, the scripts are implemented with Ruby). DB structure is pretty complex including around 150 tables.
Anyway, what I need is to see overall DB structure (DB relational model) as a graph. I can use some modeling tool, like Embarcadero ER Studio or Oracle Designer, to reverse engineer database and view it as a graph. But, then, either other developers who want to see up-to-date DB graph will have to do the same or we need to share this graph somehow (which will raise a question who is in charge of regularly updating the graph). That is not convenient. So, I wonder, possibly there is a an online tool which we can install on our internal Web server showing DB structure as a graph (of course automatically updating it when DB structure changes). We also would like to have online DB related collaboration tools too, but this feature is a MUST.

I've take the liberty of moving your thread from the DB2 forum to the Oracle forum. There's a lot better chance of getting useful answers if the question is posed in the proper place.

What I think that you are requesting is an ER Diagram. If that is what you want, there are a number of ways to provide it via your web site.

Because you are doing a commercial project, I'd recommend commercial tools to do the job so that you get the support and features that you will probably need.

I'm pretty comfortable saying that the "400 kilogram Gorilla" in the ER modeling space is still ERWin which is currently marketed by Computer Associates. This is the be-all and end-all tool for data modeling in my mind, meaning that if any tool can do a task, ERWin can do it and can usually do it faster/easier/better than any other tool I've seen.

With that being said, there are plenty of other tools that are probably adequate for your needs. Visio is one of the most useful. Visio is part of Microsoft's Visual Studio and also available as a separate product. Several of the Visio editions include the ability to both forward and reverse engineer ER diagrams from a database (including Oracle). Note that if you have Visual Studio Enterprise Architect or above, you already have Visio!

-PatP

In theory, theory and practice are identical. In practice, theory and practice are unrelated.

You can lead some folks to knowledge, but you can not make them think.
The average person thinks he's above average!
For most folks, they don't know, what they don't know.
Good judgement comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgement.

While anacedent makes multiple good points, I think that Oberon555 was looking for more than just choices and wanted guidance... When someone like Oberon555 puts a fair bit of effort into asking a question but in spite of their best efforts they don't even hit the correct keywords, then they probably can't really help themselves.

I'm all in favor of setting the kids looking for us to do their homework packing. If someone demonstrates enough background that they can and should do the research themselves, I understand why you'd tell them to go Google because while it is rude, that makes sense. In this case, I felt that Oberon555 made a good attempt at explaining what they wanted, but even I had to make a lot of assumptions that I understood the question well enough to reformat it and make it answerable.

In cases like this, I think that we as a community need to help folks to understand their question(s) and guide them to reformatting those questions, confirming that we guessed right at what they really wanted, then guiding them toward good answers. It has been a long time since I was at that stage in my career where I knew what I wanted but still didn't know what the generally accepted terms were so I could ask decent questions... However, I work with clients that have those problems every day so I still understand the frustration that they feel.

I can't speak for everyone, but I'll still do what I can to help those people. While I can't give folks on the forums the kind of time and effort that I give clients, I will still give them a good effort to help them find what they want!

-PatP

In theory, theory and practice are identical. In practice, theory and practice are unrelated.

If you don't need forward/reverse engineering or true ERD representation and a windows help file or equivalent HTML cross reference will do, then SQLSpec will do a fine job. I use it almost every day for Microsoft SQL, DB2, Microsoft Access, and Oracle databases. The author of SQLSpec is often active here at DBForums as Jezemine.

-PatP

In theory, theory and practice are identical. In practice, theory and practice are unrelated.